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Since last year's earthquake and tsunami most of Japan's nuclear power plants have either been shutdown or run at reduced capacity. As a result, Japan has turned to massive imports of natural gas and has even been burning oil to generate electricity. But neither of these options are economically sustainable in the long-term.

The problem is that Japan has no significant energy resources. Except for a little coal, they have almost no fossil fuel, poor wind and solar potential, and little biomass potential. This is why they were ramping up nuclear in the first place. The tsunami did not change this. Japan must refocus on nuclear.

Consider the options of how Japan can meet its energy demands in the next two decades. There are two short-term choices: 1) decommission all nuclear plants and replace them with new fossil fuel plants, or 2) restart the nuclear fleet and upgrade their capacity to replace the lost capacity of the Fukushima plants. There are some variations on these two, e.g., shut down only the oldest plants (twelve pre-date 1980), build a few new gas plants, or adjust the particular mix of coal versus gas, but the economic and environmental costs of these two paths are vastly different.

Japan's Hamaoka, Unit 5, an Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, built in 2005, has no need to be shut down prematurely. Units 1 and 2, old reactors from the 1970s, were shut down in 2009, as planned. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ramping up natural gas is not as easy as it may seem. It is cheap to build gas plants but expensive to fuel them. Japan imports liquid natural gas (LNG) at five times the price of natural gas in the U.S. (LNG Commodities). As Christopher Joyce from NPR recently reported, the fuel costs of replacing their nuclear fleet with natural gas would be “staggering…requiring almost 20 percent of the world’s supply of LNG” (Nuclear Woes Push Japan Into A New Energy Future). Japan’s increased use of LNG has already pushed global market prices up to near-record highs and will likely break records this year (LNG Commodities).

So gearing up fossil fuel plants in Japan will most likely be a combination of natural gas and coal, while maintaining their existing oil-fired power plants. Oil was to be phased out, along with much of their coal, as part of their low-carbon plan, but that plan is now on hold indefinitely, and their carbon emissions are rising fast.

Economically, the U.S. would benefit from Japan replacing its nuclear fleet with fossil plants. Abundant U.S. coal and gas can be exported to Japan at a nice profit. But the environmental hypocrisy of that future is not lost on the global community (See: Coal's Not Dying - it's just getting shipped abroad).

Materials and fuel are more costly in Japan relative to the U.S., and labor is slightly cheaper. So in $US, replacing Japan’s approximate 300 billion kWhrs/yr of nuclear with a mix of a third coal (twenty-one 750 MW plants with a capcity factor of 71% @ $2.5 billion each) and two-thirds gas (thirty-three 880 MW plants with a capacity factor of 80% @ $820 million each) will cost about $80 billion in construction. But the additional fuel costs for these plants will be about $4 billion/yr @ 4¢/kWhr for coal and $40 billion/yr @ 18¢/kWhr for gas, or about $44 billion/yr. Operating costs for these new plants would total about $15 billion/yr @ 0.5¢/kWhr for each fuel type. So over the next two decades, the cost of replacing nuclear with fossil fuel generation will be about $1.2 trillion, most of it in the cost of natural gas. This cost does not include financing, insurance or other non-operating or non-construction costs. It will take about ten years to fully implement this new mix.

On the other hand, the cost of restarting for the existing nuclear fleet, minus the Fukushima reactors, is $1.8 billion/yr in fuel @ 0.6¢/kWhr, and $3.9 billion/yr in operating costs @ 1.3¢/kWhr, or $5.7 billion/yr total. Upgrading the capacity of the existing fleet to achieve 300 billion kWhrs/yr will cost about $25 billion, extending the life-span of a dozen will cost about $6 billion, and building a dozen new ones to replace older ones will cost about $80 billion. So over the next two decades, the costs of keeping the nuclear fleet afloat is about $225 billion, much less than the fossil fuel alternative. This cost does not include insurance, financing or other non-operating or non-construction costs. Different assumptions can change the details but the difference will still be about five times. And restarting the nuclear fleet can be done now when the country needs it most. Japan must learn from the disaster and restart their remaining nuclear fleet by incorporating the changes in safety and corporate culture suggested by the international community, but it must restart them.

With respect to carbon and global warming, the choice facing Japan is even clearer. Bill McKibben’s recent article about climate change in Rolling Stone (Global Warming's Terrifying New Math) paints a dire picture of the continuing increase in fossil fuel use occurring worldwide. As a geologist, I have to agree. But it is strange that nuclear, the energy source best suited to lower emissions, gets no discussion. As bad as the human health effects of Chernobyl were, the environmental effects of a thousand Chernobyl’s are nothing compared to a global temperature rise of just 2° C. We need stronger global regulatory control of nuclear, as well as all other power plants, but it will very, very bad to allow fossil fuels to be the dominant energy source in this century. Present unemployment rates won’t matter in that future.

The world has too much fossil fuel to let market forces decide our future. It will take committed leadership of the global community to implement a reasonable energy mix that meets the economic and environmental needs of the planet. The significant rise in carbon emissions from Japan and Germany, two nations previously committed to emission reductions, is ominous. Japan still has a choice, but Chancellor Merkel chose politics over science. Just the health care effects of increasing coal use in Germany will erase any perceived benefit of shutting down their nuclear reactors (How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt?).

The question is: what do you care about most? The planet’s survival, economic survival, or the fear of radiation? Japan has a choice to make.